Attendance

Why is regular school attendance so important?

At Alderman Pounder Infant and Nursery School, we work closely with children and parents in connection with attendance so that each child can achieve their full potential. By law, all children of compulsory school age (5 to 16) must receive a suitable full-time education.

What we aim to achieve

Once your child is registered at school, you are legally responsible for making sure that they attend regularly. If your child fails to do so, you risk getting a penalty notice or being prosecuted. You also need to think about the negative impact upon the following:

- their learning

- their friendships

- their self-esteem and confidence

At Alderman Pounder Infant and Nursery School, we monitor the attendance of every child in the school and we will work and support those children and their families who are not attending school without sufficient reason. Holidays will not be authorised during the school year.

90% attendance sounds good, but means that your child misses:

- one half day each week

- nearly four weeks every school year

- over one school year in a school career

We have set ourselves an ambitious target for the 2017/2018 school year of 97%

Timekeeping

Timekeeping is also important in the education of your child. If your child is persistently late then they are missing out on important learning opportunities at the start of the lesson. The school day starts promptly at 9.00am. Equally, it is really important to pick your child up on time to avoid unnecessary worry on their part and not to delay staff, who often have meetings or training events after school. Our school day finishes at 3:15pm.

What are we doing to improve attendance?

Attendance of all pupils is monitored weekly and those falling below 90% are informed by letter at the end of each half term, which is then reviewed regularly. Throughout the year our senior leadership team works closely with families providing support to help overcome barriers in improving attendance. The Local Authority takes attendance issues very seriously and any family who continues to be a concern will be referred to a specific team within the Local Authority who look into these issues. This service is also triggered by children who have repeated unauthorised absences.

At Alderman Pounder Infant and Nursery School we like to encourage and praise children who attend school regularly:

- each half term children could be awarded a certificate for 100% attendance, good attendance (97% or more) or improved attendance

- each class's attendance score for the week is displayed near the main office, colour coded to highlight the level of overall attendance

At the end of the academic year, children with 100% attendance for the whole year will be entered into a prize draw to win a special prize.